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Muammar al-Qaddafi and the Libyan Jamahiriyya

History of Early Libya

Libya, whose name derives from the appellation given a Berber tribe by the ancient Egyptians, did not become an independent and unified state until the middle of the twentieth century. Since antiquity the three regions that comprise modern Libya—Tripolitania in the northwest, Cyrenaica in the east, and Fezzan in the southwest—have maintained relations with different parts of the outside world and developed unique histories and identities due to the harsh deserts that kept them separate. This internal disunity combined with Libya’s history of foreign domination had a profound impact on its modern political development and the ideology of its mercurial leader, Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi.¹

Greek settlers founded Cyrene and four other city-states in Cyrenaica between the seventh and fifth centuries B.C. Phoenicians from Carthage established several commercial settlements in Tripolitania by the fifth century B.C. From about 1,000 B.C. Fezzan was loosely governed by the Garamentes tribe, which controlled major caravan routes in the Sahara Desert. The native Berbers, especially those of the hinterland, maintained their autonomy and preserved their distinct culture despite the influence of Greek and Carthaginian settlers and domination by several foreign masters including, by the time of the Arab conquest of the seventh century, the Egyptians, the Persians, the forces of Alexander the Great, the Ptolemies of Egypt, the Romans, the Vandals, and the Byzantines.

Already well developed, the cultural and historical differences between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica intensified during nearly five hundred years of Roman governorship. The two regions maintained their distinct Carthaginian and Greek cultures and, after the partition of the Roman Empire in 395, Tripolitania was attached to the western empire and Cyrenaica was assigned to the eastern. In the fifth century Rome recognized the mastery of the Vandals (a Germanic tribe) over much of North Africa including Tripolitania. Belasarius, a general serving the Byzantine Empire—the successor to the Eastern Roman Empire—recaptured Tripolitania in 533 but, by the time of the Arab invasion, the once prosperous cities of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were racked by political decay and religious strife and resembled bleak military outposts.²

Ten years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, an Arab general by the name of Amr ibn al-As conquered Cyrenaica. Spirited Berber resistance, however, delayed al-As’s conquest of Tripolitania until 649. Another Arab general, Uqba ibn Nafi, subdued Fezzan in 663. By 715 the Arabs had spread across North Africa and had captured all but the extreme northern portion of the Iberian Peninsula.

Over the next few centuries waves of Arab armies and settlers transmitted Islam, the Arabic language, and Arab culture to the indigenous populations of North Africa. City dwellers and farmers there converted to Islam and adopted Arab culture somewhat readily, but the Berbers of the interior, while professing Islam, remained linguistically and culturally separate from the Arabs. As part of the umma or community of Muslims, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were ruled by the caliph (the successor to the Prophet Muhammad) from Damascus and, later, from Baghdad, and were governed according to sharia, the Islamic legal code.³

From the early tenth to the sixteenth centuries Tripolitania and Cyrenaica suffered widespread intraconfessional violence and political instability. Consequently, the regions were dominated by a series of Islamic dynasties, tribes, and Christian governments, which included the Fatimids of Egypt, the Berber Zurids, the Hilalian Bedouins from Arabia, the Normans from Sicily, the Almohads of Morocco, the Hafsids of Tunis, the Mamluks of Egypt, the Hapsburgs of Spain, and the Knights of St. John of Malta. During this very turbulent period corsairs operating from North African ports harassed commercial shipping in the Mediterranean.⁴

In the sixteenth century the Ottoman Turks captured the entire North African coast except Morocco, and the sultan, the Ottoman ruler in Constantinople, established regencies in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, the principal city of Tripolitania. In Tripoli the political authority was conferred upon a pasha or regent, who represented the sultan there. In the early seventeenth century Tripoli lapsed into political chaos as coup followed upon coup, and few military dictators survived a year in power. In 1711 Ahmad Qaramanli, a Turkish-Arab cavalry officer, seized power in Tripoli and founded an independent ruling dynasty while acknowledging the Ottoman sultan as his suzerain. Politically savvy and ruthless, Ahmad Pasha recognized piracy as a valuable source of revenue.⁵ During the reign of one of Ahmad’s successors, Yusuf ibn Ali Qaramanli, Tripoli’s program of state-sponsored piracy led to a naval war with the newly independent United States.

Mr. Jefferson’s War

For centuries the seizure of merchant ships and the imprisonment of their crews by North African corsairs prompted several European countries, and later the United States, to pay tribute or “protection money” to the potentates of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli—the so-called “Barbary states”—to ensure the safe passage of their merchant ships in the Mediterranean. The capture of several American merchantmen by Algerine corsairs spurred Congress to pass the Navy Act of 27 March 1794, which authorized the construction or purchase of six frigates to protect American commerce. Furthermore, in 1799 President John Adams began paying annual tribute to the rulers of the Barbary states. The share allotted to the pasha of Tripoli was eighteen thousand dollars. In exchange for the payment Yusuf Pasha promised that the corsairs based in his country would not harass American shipping.

In 1801 President Thomas Jefferson rejected Yusuf’s demand for a huge increase in annual tribute and in response the pasha declared war on the United States. Unaware of the pasha’s actions, Jefferson had already dispatched a naval squadron to the Mediterranean to protect American merchantmen and to dissuade the Tripolitan government from demanding additional tribute.⁶

The lackluster performances of the first two U.S. squadron commanders, Capt. Richard Dale and Capt. Richard V Morris, did not make much of an impression on the pasha. The deployment of the third squadron, commanded by Capt. Edward Preble, got off to a disastrous start when the frigate Philadelphia ran aground on a reef outside Tripoli harbor, resulting in the capture of the ship and the imprisonment of her crew. Despite the stunning loss, Preble displayed a relentless fighting spirit during his yearlong command of the Mediterranean Squadron. His first order of business was to destroy the U.S. frigate to prevent Yusuf from adding her to the Tripolitan fleet. In February 1804 Lt. Stephen Decatur led a raiding party that boarded and burned the Philadelphia directly beneath the guns of the citadel that protected the harbor.

On five occasions in late summer Preble shelled Tripoli with two bomb ketches borrowed from the Kingdom of Naples. Meanwhile, boarding parties led by Decatur captured or sank several Tripolitan gunboats after vicious hand-to-hand fighting. Despite the furious assaults Yusuf rejected Preble’s offer of ransom for the crewmen of the captured frigate. In early September Preble’s men loaded the ketch Intrepid with one hundred barrels of black powder and 150 rounds of shot and planned to detonate her inside Tripoli harbor. Preble hoped the explosion would stun the pasha, destroy the remainder of the pasha’s fleet, and blast a hole in the city wall near his castle. The plan failed when the Intrepid blew up prematurely, killing Lt. Richard Somers and his volunteer crew of two midshipmen and ten men. A week later Preble’s plucky squadron was relieved by a larger naval force commanded by Capt. Samuel Barron. Preble returned to the United States, where he received a hero’s welcome and accolades from Jefferson and the Congress.

While Preble had relied on naval power to confront Yusuf, Barron supported a political scheme to remove the Tripolitan despot from power. William Eaton, the American naval agent in North Africa, located Yusuf’s older brother, Ahmad ibn Ali Qaramanli, in Alexandria and persuaded Ahmad to join him in a march on Tripolitan territory. Ahmad’s promised reward for participating in the expedition was the regency of Tripoli, which Yusuf had snatched from him in a bloodless coup in 1796. Eaton’s “army” included Lt. Presley N. O’Bannon of the Marine Corps, seven enlisted Marines, a midshipman, a sailor, several Greek mercenaries, and hundreds of desert tribesmen and camp followers. In April 1805 the irregular force, supported by cannon fire from the brig Argus, schooner Nautilus, and sloop Hornet, captured the Cyrenaican city of Darnah. When Yusuf learned of the loss of Darnah he quickly sued for peace. Yusuf dropped all demands for tribute and ransomed the imprisoned Americans for sixty thousand dollars. In return the United States abandoned support of Ahmad and evacuated Darnah. On 10 June 1805 the United States and Tripoli signed the Treaty of Peace and Amity, which ended the four-year Tripolitan War.⁷

Ottoman Rule, the Sanusis, and Italian Colonization

In the years following the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, the European powers forcefully eradicated Mediterranean piracy and put an end to the system of paying tribute to the Barbary states.⁸ Deprived of the revenue derived from piracy, Tripoli’s economy declined and the country slipped into civil war. In 1835 the Ottomans forced the Qaramanli ruler, Ali II, into exile and reestablished direct rule over Tripoli. The Ottomans combined the three regions of the country into one vilayet or province—Tripolitania—ruled by an Ottoman wali (governor general) who was appointed by the sultan. In 1879 Cyrenaica became a separate province. Ottoman rule in the two provinces was for the most part turbulent, repressive, and corrupt.⁹

In the early nineteenth century Muhammad ibn Ali as-Sanusi, a highly respected Islamic scholar and marabout (holy man) from present-day Algeria, preached a message of Islamic revival based on the purity and simplicity of the early faith. He won many followers among Cyrenaican Bedouins who were attracted to his message of personal austerity and moral regeneration. In 1843 the Grand Sanusi, as he came to be known, founded the first of many lodges in Cyrenaica, which became the center of the new religious order. By the end of the nineteenth century virtually all of the Bedouin tribes in the region had pledged their allegiance to the Sanusi brotherhood. In the next century the Sanusis spearheaded the nascent Libyan nationalist movement.¹⁰

A late starter among European powers in the race for overseas colonies, Italy coveted the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. In 1911 the Italian government sent an ultimatum to the sultan, demanding to occupy the two provinces to protect Italy’s growing commercial interests. When Constantinople ignored the demand, Rome declared war. Italian forces invaded and captured Tripoli and occupied several coastal cities in Cyrenaica. Libyan tribesmen fought alongside Ottoman troops to resist the Christian invaders, but with war looming in the Balkans the Ottoman government had no choice but to sue for peace. Under the ambiguous terms of the Treaty of Lausanne signed in 1912, the sultan gave up his political dominion in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica but retained the right to supervise Libya’s religious affairs. Rome’s annexation of the provinces, recognized by the other European powers, marked the start of a colonial war that lasted off and on for two decades.¹¹

Fighting for both Islam and their independence, Sanusi tribesmen prevented the Italians from expanding beyond their enclaves on the Cyrenaican coast. By contrast, in Tripolitania the Italians had greater success subduing and controlling large portions of the region because many local leaders lacked the will to continue armed resistance. After Italy’s entry into the First World War on the side of the Allies, Sanusi leader Ahmad ash-Sharif sided with the Central Powers. Following a disastrous raid into British-occupied Egypt in 1916, ash-Sharif turned the leadership of the movement over to the young, pro-British Muhammad Idris as-Sanusi. In 1917 Idris negotiated a truce with the Allies whereby Italy and Great Britain recognized him as the ruler over the interior of Cyrenaica, while he agreed to halt attacks on Italian-held coastal cities and Egypt.¹²

After the war Italy attempted to govern the country with a colonial policy that was both moderate and accommodating. The Italians recognized the autonomous Tripolitanian Republic and accepted Idris’s hereditary rule in Cyrenaica.¹³ Nevertheless, in 1922 when Idris reluctantly accepted Tripolitania’s suggestion that he become the ruler over all of Libya, the fascist leader Benito Mussolini responded by launching a brutal campaign of military conquest. The Second Italo-Sanusi War began later that year, and by the end of 1924 the Italians had subdued northern Tripolitania and most of coastal Cyrenaica. Southern Tripolitania was pacified in 1928, Fezzan in 1930. The fiercest action took place in the interior of Cyrenaica where the aged but vigorous Shaykh Umar al-Mukhtar led Sanusi tribesmen in a relentless guerrilla campaign against the larger and technologically superior Italian forces. The Italians completed the conquest of Libya in 1931 when they captured Mukhtar in the Green Mountains of northern Cyrenaica and defeated the remnant of his rebel army at al-Kufrah Oasis in southern Cyrenaica. During the last stages of the war the Italians executed more than twenty-four thousand Cyrenaicans, herded most of the civilian population into concentration camps, and forced the remaining population to flee into the desert.¹⁴

In 1934 Mussolini formally established the Italian colony of Libya, which was comprised of four provinces—Tripoli, Misratah, Benghazi, and Darnah—in addition to a military district in Fezzan. In 1939 Libya became part of metropolitan Italy. During the 1930s the Italians invested large amounts of capital and launched several public works projects to modernize Libya’s economy, especially the agricultural sector. They set out to improve the country’s irrigation systems, roads, and port facilities. Significant progress was made, but the improvements primarily benefited the Italian colonists (who numbered over 110,000 by 1940) and a few upper-class Libyans, not the vast majority of Libya’s population. In many respects the Libyans suffered under Italian rule. Tribal grazing lands were transferred to Italian settlers, tribal government was abolished, the Sanusis were repressed, education and training programs were not established, and Libyans were excluded from the administration of their country.¹⁵

World War II and the United Nations

When Italy entered the Second World War in June 1940, Idris and other Libyan leaders declared their support for the Allies and began consulting with British military authorities. Idris pressed the British to endorse Libyan independence, but the government responded that it could not make a commitment while the war was still in progress. Idris accepted the British position, urged his followers to be patient, and continued the program of military cooperation. The British raised five Libyan battalions largely from Cyrenaica. The Libyan Arab Force (or “Sanusi Army,” as the Libyan contingent was popularly known) served under British command during the epic desert battles that raged between the German Afrika Korps of Gen. Erwin Rommel and the British Eighth Army of Gen. Claude Auchinleck and his successor, Gen. Bernard L. Montgomery. In November 1942 British forces liberated Cyrenaica from Axis control. By February 1943 all of Libya was free of Axis troops.¹⁶

The war was a traumatic experience for many Libyans, who found themselves mere pawns in a major conflict between colossal military powers. Lillian Craig Harris, an analyst with the U.S. Department of State, pointed out that for Qaddafi and many of his countrymen, “World War II is no mere historical event but a living reality that must be remembered and used. Thousands of Libyan Arabs, out of a population of less than one million were killed. The country’s economic structure, such as it had been, was devastated. Qaddafi, whose sense of history is infused with the Bedouin idea of blood debt, to this day frequently repeats his demand that Italy and Britain pay reparations for damage to Libya during World War II.”

During the war the British established military governments in Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, and Free French forces from the French colony of Chad set up a military administration in Fezzan. After the war conflicting interests among the victorious powers, conflicts that were exacerbated by the onset of the Cold War, prevented agreement among the Allies on the form and administration of a trusteeship for Libya. Consequently, the issue was referred to the United Nations for a solution. In November 1949 the General Assembly passed a resolution that called for the establishment by January 1952 of a sovereign Libyan state comprised of all three regions. The UN created a special council to supervise the transition to independence and to assist in drafting a constitution.¹⁷

United Nations officials faced extraordinary challenges as they prepared Libya for independence. About 90 percent of the population was illiterate and the country’s economy was extremely weak. In 1950 per capita income was about fifty dollars per year, and the largest source of revenue was the sale of scrap metal salvaged from World War II battlefields. Politically the Libyans could not agree on the structure of their new government. The Cyrenaicans favored a loose federation, while the Tripolitanians advocated a strong central government. Nevertheless, the Libyan Constituent Assembly, which met for the first time in November 1950, agreed unanimously that Libya would be established as a democratic, federal, and sovereign state; that the government would be a constitutional monarchy; that Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan would be provinces in the new kingdom; and that Idris would be the new nation’s first head of state. The proposed national government, in addition to the monarchy, would consist of a cabinet and a bicameral legislature, and each province would have a governor appointed by the king, a cabinet, and a legislature. In October 1951 the assembly approved the constitution and, on 24 December 1951, King Idris I proclaimed the independence of the United Kingdom of Libya.¹⁸

Independent Libya

Newly independent Libya was friendly toward the West and identified with the bloc of conservative Arab states. In the mid-1950s Libya signed treaties with Britain and the United States, whereby the two Western powers provided Libya with economic and military aid in return for military base rights. The United States continued to operate Wheelus Air Base, located just outside Tripoli. The U.S. airfield, built during World War II, was ideally situated near desert bombing ranges and strategically positioned on the southern flank of the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Over the next two decades Sixth Fleet ships made frequent port visits to Tripoli. In 1957 Libya accepted the terms of the Eisenhower Doctrine, a U.S. economic and military aid program designed to counter Soviet influence in the Middle East and North Africa. Through the program Libya acquired a substantial increase in American economic assistance and additional military equipment.¹⁹

In the 1950s and 1960s Libya supported Arab causes but played a minor role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the turbulent arena of inter-Arab politics. The radical Arab nationalism espoused by Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser threatened conservative monarchs like Idris and galvanized millions of young Arabs who shared Nasser’s vision of Arab unity, nonalignment, and social justice.

Despite the infusion of economic and technical assistance from the United States, Great Britain, and the United Nations, Libya remained a very poor and underdeveloped country throughout the 1950s. This situation changed unexpectedly and dramatically in June 1959 when the American oil company Esso discovered a major oil field in Cyrenaica. Commercial development followed and, with foreign companies paying royalties of 50 percent to the Libyan government, the country experienced unprecedented affluence. The government financed several major public works projects, expanded educational and health services throughout the country, and supported the development of low-cost housing, small businesses, and industries. Within a decade the Libyan per capita income had increased to about fifteen hundred dollars per year.²⁰

The oil boom of the 1960s created social and economic problems that the weak national government was neither able nor willing to address. Tripolitanians resented the priority Idris gave to Cyrenaican affairs, while the growing urban middle class felt excluded from the political process and younger Libyans objected to his pro-Western foreign policy and his affiliation with conservative Arab leaders. Furthermore, many Libyans were outraged by widespread government inefficiency and corruption and protested the inequitable distribution of oil revenues, which enriched prominent families over poorer elements of the population. The group most dissatisfied with Idris, however, was the junior officer corps of the armed forces. They were inspired by Nasser’s message of Arab nationalism and were determined to restore Arab honor in the wake of the devastating Arab defeat in the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War. As the disaffection of the population intensified, the king became increasingly estranged from the Libyan people and spent most of his time secluded in his palace in Darnah.

The Libyan Revolution

On 1 September 1969, while Idris was out of the country for rest and medical treatment, a group of junior army officers calling themselves the Free Unionist Officers boldly took control of the Libyan government and overthrew the monarchy. The bloodless coup was enthusiastically supported throughout the country, especially by young city dwellers. The Free Officers, who modeled their coup after Nasser’s 1952 takeover of Egypt, named a twelve-member directorate, the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), to serve as the supreme governing authority.²¹ The RCC proclaimed that “Libya is deemed a free, sovereign republic under the name of the Libyan Arab Republic—ascending with God’s help to exalted heights, proceeding in the path of freedom, unity, and social justice, guaranteeing the right of equality to its citizens, and opening before them the doors of honorable work.”²²

The Nixon administration heeded the advice of State Department officers who had served in Libya and five days after the coup recognized the new government. The administration believed that the Free Officers might provide a bulwark against the spread of Soviet influence in the Arab world. In the years immediately following the revolution the decision seemed vindicated by the volume of anti-Soviet and anticommunist statements issued by the RCC. For example, the new government frequently referred to the Soviet Union as an atheistic society, and it condemned Soviet involvement in the 1971 war between India and Pakistan because the conflict signaled “Soviet imperialist designs in the area.”²³

Within weeks the RCC transformed Libya from a conservative monarchy into a revolutionary republic devoted to Islamic principles and dedicated to Arab nationalism. The new government embarked on a campaign to cleanse the country of corruption; it initiated important social, economic, and political reforms; it rejected colonialism and foreign values; it declared its neutrality in the struggle between the Western and Eastern blocs while denouncing both communism and imperialism; it sought the immediate evacuation of the American and British bases; and it affirmed Libya’s dedication to Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine. The young officers immediately issued decrees that banned the sale and consumption of alcohol beverages, they closed nightclubs, and they ordered all public signs to be written in Arabic.

It soon became apparent to international observers that the most influential member of the RCC—and the de facto leader of the new republic—was a twenty-seven-year-old army captain by the name of Muammar al-Qaddafi, a deeply pious and ascetic Signal Corps officer whose revolutionary views on Arab nationalism were patterned after those of his hero, Gamal Abdul Nasser. Shortly after the coup the RCC named an eight-member cabinet to govern the country, appointed Qaddafi commander in chief of the Libyan Armed Forces, and promoted him to the rank of colonel. Qaddafi attained widespread support and popularity by pledging to end foreign political, economic, and cultural domination of the country and by extending the benefits of prosperity to all Libyans through a considerable expansion of free social services. He believed that as long as he maintained a high standard of living for the Libyan people he could purchase support and legitimacy for the regime.²⁴ Qaddafi was certainly a revolutionary, but there was no denying the pragmatism that enhanced his chances for survival.

Muammar al-Qaddafi

Muammar al-Qaddafi was born in 1942 to a Bedouin family in Sirtica, the barren territory that separates Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. His family belonged to a tribe of Berber-Arab livestock herders, al-Qaddafa. As a youth Qaddafi was profoundly influenced by stories of Italian atrocities committed against his country during the colonial period, the devastation wrought by World War II, the shocking Arab defeat in Palestine in 1948–49, and events in Nasser’s Egypt of the 1950s. It was during his early adolescence that he began listening to Nasser’s fiery speeches on the “Voice of the Arabs” radio program and started formulating his political ideology. Qaddafi attended a Quranic elementary school in Surt and began secondary school in Sabha in Fezzan. While at Sabha he surrounded himself with similar-minded classmates who wanted to “liberate” Libya by overthrowing their king. He formed a “central committee” and held secret meetings to discuss Nasser’s political ideas. He was expelled for leading a pro-Nasser student demonstration and completed his secondary education under a tutor in Misratah in Tripolitania. From his Islamic upbringing and Bedouin background Qaddafi cultivated a deep religious consciousness, a strict set of personal ethics, and a strong sense of egalitarianism.

For Libyans of humble origins, a military career provided the best means of obtaining an advanced education and achieving higher economic and social status. Furthermore, for Qaddafi and other devotees of Nasser, the military offered the best vehicle for producing revolutionary change within the political establishment. In 1963, at the first general meeting of his movement (which was attended by followers from Sabha, Misratah, and Tripoli), the conspirators decided that Qaddafi and two other young men would enroll in the Libyan Royal Military Academy in Benghazi in Cyrenaica. After entering the academy Qaddafi began recruiting other officer-cadets into his revolutionary organization, which he named the Free Unionist Officers. After receiving his army commission in 1965 Qaddafi studied communications at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in Great Britain. Then came the devastating Six-Day War, which the Libyan armed forces observed from the sidelines. Just as Nasser had vowed to act against his king after Egypt’s humiliating defeat in 1948, after Israel’s stunning victory over Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in June 1967 several young Libyan officers pledged to rescue Arab esteem and deepen Libya’s commitment to Arab causes by abolishing the corrupt, pro-Western monarchy.

Revolutionary Libya

Within months of the coup the RCC consolidated its control over Libyan society and Qaddafi increased his power within the ruling apparatus. Qaddafi assumed the posts of prime minister and minister of defense while maintaining his leadership of the RCC. The regime brought more than two hundred former government officials to trial before “people’s courts” on charges of treason and malfeasance. Several individuals received death sentences or long prison terms. Former King Idris was tried and convicted in absentia and sentenced to death, but the sentence was never carried out. The RCC undermined the power and prestige of the Sanusis and assailed tribal distinctions as impediments to unity and social progress. The legal code was brought into compliance with sharia, and all political parties, except the RCC-sponsored Arab Socialist Union (ASU), were abolished. The ASU, which was modeled after Nasser’s party of the same name, was established to stimulate political participation, promote revolutionary fervor, and stoke enthusiasm for the regime. All trade unions were incorporated into the ASU, intellectuals were publicly repudiated, newspapers were shut down or taken over by the government, and all Italians and Jews were expelled from the country.²⁵

In the mid-1960s the independence afforded by oil income and the growing popular appeal of Arab nationalism prompted the Libyan government to negotiate an end to the basing agreements it held with the United States and Great Britain. Both countries decided before the coup to evacuate their bases and hastened their departures after the RCC assumed power. The Nixon administration decided that Wheelus field was of marginal value and believed that a confrontation over the base could harm relations with the new leaders in Tripoli and could threaten America’s very lucrative oil interests. In the summer of 1970 the United States transferred control of Wheelus Air Base to the Libyan government.

After the closure of the American and British bases, Tripoli sought new sources for the country’s military equipment. To remain dependent on the United States and Great Britain for modern weaponry would have generated protest at home and criticism throughout the Arab world, since both countries were viewed as supportive of Israel and hostile to Arab interests. France, which had become increasingly dependent on imported Libyan oil and had developed an even-handed policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, agreed in 1970 to sell Libya a weapons package valued at four hundred million dollars. Although the contract included 110 Mirage fighter aircraft, France refused to sell Tripoli a fleet of medium tanks. That same year Qaddafi approached the Soviet bloc for arms, all the while maintaining his staunch opposition to communism and asserting his country’s status as a nonaligned state. He subsequently negotiated a deal with Moscow for the purchase of thirty tanks and one hundred armored personnel carriers.²⁶ By the time Libya and the Soviet Union concluded their first major arms deal in 1974 both countries had come to realize that the immediate benefits of their tentative relationship outweighed their ideological differences and long-term disagreements. Tripoli relied on the Soviet Union for huge quantities of modern military equipment and technical assistance. Moscow appreciated Libya’s anti-Western policies, shared its goal of fostering radical elements in the Arab world and Africa, and valued its hard currency. Nonetheless, Qaddafi remained steadfastly opposed to communism, which he equated with slavery, and the Kremlin carefully avoided support for or identification with Qaddafi’s controversial theories and causes.²⁷ A senior State Department official described the burgeoning Libyan-Soviet relationship as a “marriage of convenience.”²⁸

By the mid-1970s Libya’s foreign policy had tilted dramatically toward increased cooperation with the Soviet Union, although the regime still maintained the facade of nonalignment. Furthermore, shortly after the United States evacuated Wheelus field the RCC informed the Nixon administration that Washington would not be able to achieve good relations with Tripoli so long as it supported Israel. In light of these developments, relations between the United States and Libya cooled rapidly. In 1973 the United States recalled its ambassador to Libya and did not dispatch a replacement.²⁹

The Cultural Revolution

In 1972 Qaddafi relinquished his duties as prime minister and dedicated himself to articulating his revolutionary ideology, which he named the Third International Theory. According to the theory both capitalism and communism are false ideologies, because the former emphasizes worker exploitation while the latter stresses class warfare. Qaddafi’s theory, on the other hand, eliminates class distinctions and provides for direct popular participation at all levels of government. The Third International Theory also champions the concept of positive neutrality by which Third World nations can coexist with the United States and the Soviet Union and can conclude agreements with them for their own interests but will not fall under the domination of either superpower.³⁰

By 1973 Qaddafi realized that the ASU was not going to generate the “tumultuous popular revolution” that he had envisioned.³¹ Consequently, in April he launched a new revolution based on the following five-point program:

1. All existing laws must be repealed and replaced by revolutionary enactments designed to produce the necessary revolutionary change.

2. All feeble minds must be weeded out of society by taking appropriate measures toward perverts and deviationists.

3. An administrative revolution must be staged in order to eliminate all forms of bourgeoisie and bureaucracy.

4. Arms must be distributed to the people who will point them at the chests of anyone who challenges the revolution.

5. A cultural revolution must be initiated to get rid of all imported poisonous ideas and to fuse the people’s genuine moral and material potentialities.³²

Over the next five years Qaddafi outlined his revolutionary political, economic, and social ideas in his three-volume work, The Green Book, which he called “the gospel of the new era, the era of the masses.”³³ The CIA called the work “a blueprint for reshaping human society.”³⁴ With the publication of The Green Book Qaddafi’s program to indoctrinate the masses became more thorough and organized.³⁵

During the Libyan Cultural Revolution Qaddafi instituted several reforms to overhaul the political order of the country. Hoping to kindle a revolutionary passion among the people and believing that direct democracy was the true form of democracy, he urged his countrymen to take charge of the government and run it themselves through a system of “people’s committees.” Within a few months thousands of committees were established throughout Libya. They were organized both on a geographical basis and within diverse organizations, such as universities, businesses, and government bureaucracies. Eventually the committees assumed responsibility for local and regional administration and operated basic services in fields such as education, agriculture, housing, and public utilities. The concept of direct democracy or “people’s power,” which Qaddafi espoused in The Green Book and which the people’s committees embodied, provided the basis for a new political structure: the “people’s congresses.” In September 1975 the General People’s Congress (GPC) was instituted as the umbrella organization for the people’s committees. The GPC replaced the RCC as the highest legislative and executive body in the country and supplanted the ASU as the national political organization.

The GPC designated Qaddafi as its general secretary and transferred most of its authority to him. At Qaddafi’s urging, on 2 March 1977 it approved the “Declaration of the Establishment of the People’s Authority” and proclaimed the birth of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriyya. The difficult-to-translate term jamahiriyya is generally rendered as “peopledom” or “state of the masses.” Under the system of “people’s congresses” all adults participated in the deliberations of their local Basic People’s Congress (BPC), whose decisions were passed to the GPC for consideration and possible implementation. In theory the BPCs were the ultimate source of government authority and decision-making power, thus illustrating Qaddafi’s belief that the people were capable of governing themselves.

Qaddafi also established a system of “revolutionary committees” staffed by young political zealots that were meant to supervise the people’s committees and congresses, to increase the population’s devotion to the revolution, and to protect the Jamahiriyya against opposition to and deviation from the official ideology. The systems of committees and congresses succeeded in producing higher levels of public participation. In March 1979 the GPC announced that power had been successfully transferred to the people. Soon after that Qaddafi abdicated his position as general secretary and adopted the title of “Leader of the Revolution” or, more simply, “the Leader.”³⁶ All official claims to the contrary, the Libyan political system had become more authoritarian with Qaddafi exercising supreme power with the aid of a small coterie of trusted advisers. “Theoretically, this is genuine democracy,” wrote the Leader. “But realistically, the strong always rule.”³⁷

Qaddafi’s remaking of the Libyan economy paralleled his efforts to reform the political structure. According to The Green Book, private enterprise, rent, and wages were forms of exploitation that had to be abolished.³⁸ He urged Libyan workers to liberate themselves from the slavery imposed by the “wage owners” and to become full “partners, not wage earners” in the economy by taking control of “the public and private means of production.”³⁹ Under his radical economic reforms workers formed self-management committees, and employees seized control of agricultural enterprises, service organizations, and private companies (except those in the oil and banking sectors). The ownership of private property was severely restricted, since Qaddafi believed that the accumulation of personal wealth in excess of one’s basic necessities could only be done at the expense of others. Owning more than one dwelling was prohibited, private retail stores were replaced by state-run discount “people’s supermarkets,” and access to individual bank accounts was restricted to provide funds for public projects. Qaddafi declared that all Libyans should have their basic needs satisfied and by 1980 virtually no citizen lacked food, clothing, education, medical care, housing, or transportation.⁴⁰ “I have created a Utopia here in Libya,” he declared. “Not an imaginary one that people write about in books, but a concrete Utopia.”⁴¹

Qaddafi’s economic measures benefited the poor but created deep resentment among members of the enterprising and educated middle class, who began leaving the country in large numbers. By 1982 as many as one hundred thousand Libyans had emigrated, resulting in a critical shortage of skilled managers and experienced technicians. Some exiles formed highly visible groups opposed to Qaddafi’s increasingly autocratic regime and, in early 1980, Qaddafi launched a concerted effort to assassinate expatriate dissidents. Over the course of the year Libyan assassins carried out fourteen attacks in seven countries, resulting in the murder of eleven dissidents and the wounding of one.⁴² In a speech on 2 March 1981 Qaddafi called for the elimination of all opposition to his regime. “It is the duty of the Libyan people constantly to liquidate their opponents,” he declared. “The physical and final liquidation of the opponents of popular authority must continue at home and abroad, everywhere.”⁴³

Inside Libya Qaddafi faced several disaffected groups. The property-owning middle class opposed his economic reforms; intellectuals castigated his ideology; and Islamic leaders denounced his nationalization of endowed Islamic properties, they condemned his rejection of the hadith—the sayings and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad—as a source of sharia, and they denied his assertions that The Green Book was compatible with and based upon Islamic principles. The most serious threat to Qaddafi, however, came from the military and the RCC. In 1975 the ministers of foreign affairs and planning (both members of the RCC) with the help of about thirty army officers tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the regime. The two senior government officials vehemently disagreed with Qaddafi over the way in which the oil revenues were being spent. They sought to reduce spending for military equipment and foreign ventures in favor of internal development. In a severe crackdown on dissent the regime executed twenty-two of the accused army conspirators in 1977. After the attempted coup Qaddafi surrounded himself with a tight circle of loyalists and became increasingly isolated from the people, rarely mingling with crowds as once was his habit. He became so obsessed with his personal security that, for a time, he employed a cadre of female bodyguards because he believed that an Arab gunman would have difficulty firing at women.⁴⁴

Qaddafi’s Foreign Policy

In the area of foreign affairs Qaddafi struggled ceaselessly to elevate Libya’s status from a relatively insignificant actor on the stage of Arab politics to a major force in the affairs of the Arab world and the Middle East. His foreign policy was preoccupied with Arab unity, support for the Palestinians and the need for front-line Arab states to confront Israel, the removal of outside influences from the Middle East and Africa, and support for liberation movements in all parts of the world.

After Nasser’s death in 1970 Qaddafi became the most outspoken proponent of Arab unity. He believed that the Arab nation was one homogeneous entity and that Arab power could only be attained through complete union. Furthermore, he was convinced that a unified Arab nation could not be achieved until Israel was destroyed and the Palestinian people returned to their homes in historic Palestine. He considered the creation of Israel the ultimate indignity wrought by the West upon the Arab nation. It is important to note, however, that he considered Zionism—the political movement born in Europe in the late nineteenth century—the real enemy of the Arabs, not the Jewish people as such. Nevertheless, under Qaddafi Libyan Jews suffered greatly, having been forced to leave the country shortly after the coup.

Over the years Qaddafi attempted unsuccessfully to merge Libya with a number of Arab countries, including Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, and Morocco. He argued that the unification process should start immediately and rejected the view of most Arab leaders that a union between two or more countries could only be attained through a long, gradual process. In April 1971 Anwar as-Sadat (Nasser’s successor), Qaddafi, and Syrian president Hafiz al-Asad proclaimed a union between Libya, Egypt, and Syria which they named the Federation of Arab Republics (FAR). Regarding the FAR as only the first step toward comprehensive Arab unity, Qaddafi proposed a full political merger between Sadat’s Egypt and Libya. Qaddafi believed that the combination of Libyan petroleum wealth and Egyptian military strength would make him the dominant leader in the Arab world and would invigorate the struggle against Israel. Sadat agreed to the proposal in principle but disagreed with Qaddafi over the pace of unification. Qaddafi pushed for immediate union, but Sadat urged an incremental approach. The Egyptian president realized that unification would be difficult to achieve considering the profound political, economic, and social differences between their two countries.

During the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War the relationship between Qaddafi and Sadat took an unexpected turn. Qaddafi was furious that his FAR partners—Sadat and Asad—had excluded him from their prewar planning and had devised a stunning, two-pronged attack on Israel. He was further outraged that Sadat agreed to a cease-fire while Egyptian troops were still fighting on the east bank of the Suez Canal. He went so far as to call the Egyptian president a coward. In the years following the war their relationship deteriorated into a series of accusations and counter-accusations that effectively ended any possibility of a merger. In July 1977 mutual suspicion between the two leaders and Egyptian charges of Libyan subversion led to a series of violent border clashes in which the Egyptian military prevailed over Qaddafi’s armed forces. The final break between the two countries came when Sadat launched his peace initiative in late 1977, an effort that culminated in the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of March 1979. Tripoli severed diplomatic relations with Cairo, and Qaddafi played a leading role in rallying the radical Arab states—Algeria, Libya, South Yemen, and Syria—and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in vehement opposition to Sadat’s separate peace with Israel.⁴⁵

Convinced of the righteousness of his causes, Qaddafi employed a number of unconventional tactics to achieve his foreign policy objectives. In particular he used petroleum as a political weapon, he targeted moderate Arab and African governments for subversion, and he supported and sponsored international terrorism. Qaddafi realized that his country’s vast petroleum resources could finance huge internal development projects and the purchase of sophisticated weaponry. In 1970 and 1971 he demanded and won large increases in the price that foreign oil companies paid for Libyan crude oil, raising the per barrel price from $2.23 to $3.45. Within two years the government had acquired a controlling interest in all oil companies operating in Libya, and by early 1974 the level of control had risen to approximately 60 percent. During the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War Qaddafi joined other Arab oil producers in imposing an embargo against the countries that supported Israel, an embargo that chiefly was aimed at the United States.⁴⁶

Qaddafi targeted moderate Arab governments for their opposition to his vision of a united Arab nation under Libyan leadership, their positive relations with the West, and, for some, their willingness to discuss peace with the Zionist enemy. He also sought the overthrow of moderate governments in sub-Saharan Africa as the precursor to the establishment of a Libya-dominated league of radical, anti-Western, and anti-Zionist states.⁴⁷ In the 1970s Qaddafi’s growing isolation within the Arab world and in Africa flamed his penchant for subversion, which included instigating coups, supporting opposition groups, aiding insurrections, and planning assassinations. Qaddafi’s subversive activities not only disturbed Western governments but led to extremely poor relations with three of his African neighbors: Tunisia, Chad, and Sudan.

In 1974 President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia first accepted but then canceled a proposed union with Libya. He later accused Qaddafi of carrying out several acts of subversion, including plots to assassinate Tunisian officials and incite armed rebellion. The most spectacular accusation came in 1980 when Libya was charged with fomenting a guerrilla uprising. At Qaddafi’s direction several Tunisian insurgents attempted unsuccessfully to capture the town of Gafsa in central Tunisia. To counter Qaddafi’s aggression the United States increased its military assistance to the Bourguiba government.⁴⁸

Libya’s interest in Chad was based on ethnic and religious ties, which gave rise to longstanding territorial claims. Qaddafi coveted a portion of Chadian territory bordering Libya—the Aouzou Strip—and in 1973 dispatched troops to occupy the area, which was reputed to be rich in mineral deposits. In 1975 Libya annexed the Aouzou Strip and, from this base, Qaddafi supported northern Muslim tribesmen in their protracted rebellion against the predominantly non-Muslim Chadian government. In early 1979 fighting reached N’Djamena, the capital, and, with Libyan backing, the rebel leader Goukouni Oueddei was installed as the head of the Transitional National Unity Government (GUNT). Oueddei became, in effect, the president of Chad. Qaddafi supported Oueddei and his private army, the People’s Armed Forces (FAP), which was locked in a struggle against the Armed Forces of the North (FAN), a competing rebel army commanded by Hissene Habré, Oueddei’s fellow tribesman and a former prime minister. By 1980 Habré’s troops, who were backed by France, Egypt, and Sudan, controlled most of N’Djamena and several important towns in the northern half of the country.⁴⁹ In October of that year Qaddafi ordered his armed forces into the fray and sent shock waves across most of Africa when he publicly declared that Libya considered “Niger second in line to Chad.”⁵⁰ By the end of the year approximately sixty-five hundred Libyan troops were serving in Chad. Buttressed by the Libyan intervention, Oueddei’s forces launched a major offensive that resulted in the capture of N’Djamena in December. In a fateful decision Oueddei and his Libyan allies decided not to pursue the remnants of Habré’s army, which managed to escape to Sudan.

After the victory Qaddafi announced the merger of Libya and Chad. His statement generated such a negative reaction among African heads of state that an ad hoc committee of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) met in emergency session in January 1981. The OAU issued a communiqué that condemned the merger and called on Qaddafi to withdraw his troops from Chad immediately.⁵¹ After months of intense diplomatic pressure Qaddafi canceled plans for the merger and redeployed his troops to the Aouzou Strip.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s President Jafar an-Numayri of Sudan accused Qaddafi of subverting his regime by instigating several coup attempts, by sponsoring acts of sabotage (including the bombing of the Chadian embassy in Khartoum), by fomenting unrest in the western province of Darfur, and by supporting the rebellion in southern Sudan. The two leaders also sparred bitterly over foreign affairs. Qaddafi condemned Numayri for failing to denounce Sadat’s peace initiative and, in 1980, Numayri reproved Libya’s incursion into Chad. The following year, in the aftermath of the bombing of the Chadian embassy in Khartoum, the Sudanese government expelled all Libyan diplomats.⁵² Numayri was thoroughly obsessed with what he perceived as a genuine Libyan threat to his regime. In response he strengthened his ties with Egypt; he provided weapons and logistical support to Chadian rebel Hissene Habré and several anti-Qaddafi exile groups; he negotiated a military aid package with the United States valued at over one hundred million dollars; and he offered Washington the use of Sudanese military bases in the event Sudan was threatened by an outside force.

Qaddafi was also accused of meddling in the affairs of several other African countries, particularly the nations of the Sahel (the huge grassland region south of the Sahara Desert). Presidents Moussa Traoré of Mali and Seyni Kountché of Niger charged Qaddafi with plotting to overthrow their governments. The popularly elected government of Ghana expelled Libyan diplomats, accusing them of subversive activities. The governments of Senegal and Gambia severed diplomatic relations with Libya, accusing the Qaddafi regime of imprisoning their citizens and forcing them into military training against their will. They reported that Libyan agents hired Muslim tribesmen from drought-battered areas to work in the Libyan oil fields and then forced them to serve in Qaddafi’s “Islamic Legion.” After completing their basic training these “legionnaires” often slipped back to their native countries and performed acts of sabotage and insurrection.⁵³ The widely respected former president of Senegal, Leopold Senghor, stated that Qaddafi’s campaign of aggression was “designed to destroy Africa south of the Sahara and create a vast Libyan empire.”⁵⁴ Similarly, the U.S. State Department called Qaddafi’s announcement of a merger with Chad a valid expression of his “expansionist goals to absorb his Arab and Muslim neighbors in a Libyan-dominated state.”⁵⁵

Exacerbating his estrangement from his fellow African leaders, Qaddafi came to the aid of two of the world’s most reviled dictators—Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Empire and Uganda’s Idi Amin Dada—during their struggles to remain in power. When Bokassa was overthrown in 1979 two hundred Libyan soldiers were serving in his army. In late 1978 and early 1979 Qaddafi airlifted more than two thousand soldiers and a substantial amount of sophisticated military equipment to Uganda in a vain attempt to help Amin defeat a combined invasion force of Tanzanian troops and Ugandan exiles. After escaping from the capital at Kampala (which was soon captured by the invading army), the deposed “President for Life” found temporary asylum in Tripoli. Approximately six hundred Libyans were killed and most of their equipment lost during the Ugandan operation—an unmitigated military debacle.⁵⁶

Many African countries reacted strongly to Qaddafi’s record of aggression. Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, and Senegal severed diplomatic relations with Libya in 1980. That same year Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Nigeria vigorously protested the conversion of Libyan embassies into “people’s bureaus” staffed by revolutionary zealots instead of professional diplomats. Each country responded by expelling the Libyan delegations from their countries. Furthermore, Kenya and Upper Volta (renamed Burkina Faso in 1984) refused to permit Libya to establish people’s bureaus in their countries. By 1981 a total of twelve African countries had either broken diplomatic relations with Libya, expelled Libyan diplomats, or closed Libyan people’s bureaus. Political analyst Ronald B. St. John very aptly noted that “Sub-Saharan Africa was beginning to show the unity which Qaddafi had long advocated, the common bond being opposition to Libyan policy.”⁵⁷

Qaddafi and Terrorism

By the late 1970s Western leaders regarded Qaddafi as one of the world’s most notorious practitioners of international terrorism. They accused him of using it to attain foreign policy objectives that he could not achieve through conventional diplomatic or military means. According to the CIA Qaddafi’s role in international terrorism included the funding of terrorist activities, the procurement of arms and other supplies for terrorist organizations, the use of Libyan camps and advisers for guerrilla training, and the use of Libyan diplomatic posts as bases for terrorist operations.⁵⁸ The CIA also reported that Qaddafi frequently used Libya’s United African Airlines (UAA) to support terrorist operations, subversion, and armed intervention. Ostensibly a nonscheduled passenger and cargo air carrier, UAA was staffed by several Libyan intelligence operatives and provided transport services for the Libyan armed forces and the Libyan intelligence service. In August 1981 Qaddafi directed the airline to open eighteen new offices in Africa, thus expanding and strengthening his intelligence network on the continent. When Qaddafi dispatched his troops to Chad, UAA airlifted weapons, ammunition, and military vehicles into the country.⁵⁹

Within a few years of seizing power Qaddafi had established his reputation as a major supporter of international terrorism because of his involvement in a series of sensational terrorist acts. He provided extensive logistical support, funding, weapons, and training for the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. The organization was best known for the brutal massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany. Libya was linked to another deadly Black September operation: the attack on the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Khartoum in March 1973. The assault claimed the lives of Cleo A. Noel Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Sudan, and his chargé d’affaires, George C. Moore. That same month the Irish navy intercepted the SS Claudia near the coast of Ireland and, upon inspection, discovered it was transporting weapons to the Irish Republican Army. Qaddafi readily admitted that the arms were from Libya. In December 1973 Palestinian terrorists assaulted a Pan Am airliner at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport, murdering thirty-one passengers. Italian investigators learned that the terrorists had traveled from Tripoli to conduct the attack and that Libya had provided them with money and arms. Qaddafi also developed a close working relationship with Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the notorious Venezuelan terrorist known as “Carlos,” whose group carried out the spectacular 1975 kidnapping of oil ministers attending a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna.⁶⁰

In 1981 the State Department reported that Qaddafi spent hundreds of millions of dollars each year on terrorist activities and operated more than a dozen training camps where terrorist organizations, radical groups, and guerrilla movements received instruction in hijacking, assassination, commando tactics, and the use of explosives.⁶¹ By the early 1980s Qaddafi was providing funds, training, and logistical support to insurgent movements, opposition groups, and terrorist elements in more than thirty countries, from South America to the Philippines.⁶² “Libya runs twenty-five terrorist training camps,” observed William J. Casey, President Ronald Reagans first CIA director. “[Terrorism is] their second largest export, after oil.”⁶³ Casey may have exaggerated the number of training camps but there was no denying Libya’s huge role in the world of terrorism.

Qaddafi unabashedly defended his use of terrorism and subversion as a matter of principle, regarding it as a powerful way to avenge every injustice committed against Libya. Political scientist René Lemarchand noted that Qaddafi’s “violently anti-Western disposition and his passionate commitment to a reconstruction of the Arab nation are the product of a uniquely cruel and frustrating historical experience.”⁶⁴ Similarly, a CIA analyst pointed out that Qaddafi seems “to be motivated by a strong desire to take revenge . . . not so much for what we did to him last year or two weeks ago but for the humiliation of Islam, for the cultural and actual conquest of the Middle East.”⁶⁵ According to the CIA, “He publicly portrays attacks by groups anywhere in the world as spontaneous events in an ongoing war against colonialism and Zionism and paints himself as a leading player in this war whose revolutionary ideals are shared by the ‘oppressed’ worldwide.”⁶⁶ A State Department special report concluded that Qaddafi “fancies himself a leader and agent of historic forces that will reorder Third World politics to his taste. His vision provides both a motive and a rationale for providing military and financial aid to radical regimes and for undermining moderate governments by creating or supporting subversive groups and abetting terrorists.” Furthermore, “Qaddafi’s aggressive policies increasingly have focused on undermining U.S. and other Western interests in the Third World, as he sees these as the main barrier to his radical and expansionist goals.”⁶⁷

Qaddafi’s involvement with international terrorism defined his country’s relationship with the United States. According to Ronald B. St. John, “What Libya saw as justifiable support for national liberation movements, the United States viewed as blatant interference in the domestic affairs of other states, if not active support for international terrorists.”⁶⁸ During the early and mid-1980s relations between Washington and Tripoli dramatically worsened and eventually led to a series of violent confrontations.